I indicated yesterday that I’ve had a recurring conversation about the character of the gospel.  When the topic arises of the larger, broader, more robust and holistic gospel of the kingdom found in the Gospels, this question typically follows: How do I talk about that?  How do I communicate that to someone? I suspect that […]

I’m heavy into the Gospel of Mark these days and thoroughly enjoying it.  In Mark, Jesus preaches the gospel of the kingdom.  That is, the subject matter of his preaching is the kingdom of God.  God’s long-awaited salvation in the form of God’s restored order of creation’s flourishing has arrived with the advent of Jesus, […]

We prayed with our new students this prayer to begin the school year: Father, we praise you for your grace to us in Christ. Lord, we give you thanks. Father, we praise you for calling us to yourself. Lord, we give you thanks. Father, we praise you for making us new, for transforming us by […]

A second thing to consider: Study is vitally related to worship in that a well-prepared minister is a blessing to God’s people.  Churches need fit and faithful servants.  God’s people need to hear from God’s word.  They need to hear from competent counselors about how to navigate life in the fear of the Lord. One […]

I’ll post over the next few days my presentation from yesterday to the new students at GRTS. I want to talk with you today about biblical and theological study as worship. In the minds of many wonderful Christian people, those two things don’t go together too well.  Worship involves devotion and passion, losing ourselves in […]

A snippet from a meditation I’m writing on giving thanks: In Scripture, we see that giving thanks is serious business. In Luke 17, Jesus connects thanksgiving with saving faith, relating this parable to his disciples: Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee.  As he was going into […]

I’ve finished for the second time My Name is Asher Lev and am now re-reading The Gift of Asher Lev.  They’re beautifully written and it’s such a lovely story. There’s a conversation in the second book between the Rebbe and Asher Lev in which Chaim Potok captures well the character of discernment required of pastors and […]

Over the last several posts, I’ve argued that it is unlikely that Paul’s words in Philemon 15-16 can be interpreted to mean that Philemon and Onesimus partake of a common humanity. I think that it is more likely that Paul indicates that Philemon and Onesimus are brothers.  This is the most natural reading of the […]

In this post, I’ll enumerate a few more reasons why I believe that when Paul states that Philemon and Onesimus are adelphoi en sarki that he does not mean that they are both human beings. Third, Paul notes that Philemon’s and Onesimus’s sharing “brotherhood in the flesh” is a relationship that goes beyond what Onesimus […]

Last week I claimed that no one in the ancient world would have assumed that slaves and masters share the same humanity and that this made it unlikely that the phrase adelphoi en sarki (lit., “brothers in the flesh”) can mean “fellow humans.” One might object, however, that this is precisely the burden of Paul’s […]